So this is the one where I finally caved and got Instagram on my phone, and then a week later Facebook goes and buys the whole company for a billion dollars. Good timing, I guess, though it doesnt feel like good timing, it feels like I joined a party right as someone announced they were buying the building.
Quick recap in case youve been off the grid: Instagram finally shipped an Android version on April 3rd. Ive got a Galaxy Nexus and Id been half-ignoring the whole Instagram thing for over a year because it was iPhone-only and I wasnt about to buy a new phone just to put fake film grain on pictures of my lunch. The second it hit the Play Store I downloaded it, mostly out of curiosity, and within like a day my brother-in-law had already posted eleven photos of his dog wearing a bandana. Eleven. I counted.
Then six days later, April 9th, Zuckerberg posts on his own wall (his own wall, which is a very Facebook thing to do, announcing a billion-dollar acquisition like its a status update about brunch) that Facebook is buying Instagram for about a billion dollars in cash and stock. A company with thirteen employees. Thirteen! You could fit them all in one conference room with seats to spare, and its worth more than most regional airlines.
I know a billion dollars isnt what it used to be in tech-land, everyone throws that number around now like its a large fry, but this one stuck with me because of what Instagram actually is. Its filters and a square crop and a follow button. Thats not nothing, and I get that the growth numbers are real, but Im still turning it over in my head trying to figure out where the actual billion dollars of value lives. Apparently Twitter had offered something like $500 million just a few days before Facebook swooped in, which if true means this thing doubled in perceived value over the course of a long weekend. Nobodys phone works that fast, but apparently term sheets do.
My honest complaint, and this has nothing to do with the acquisition, is that Instagram still doesnt have any kind of proper web version. You cant browse it in a browser. If you want to see a photo somebody sent you, youre stuck either having the app or clicking a link that just kind of shrugs at you. For a company two hundred and fifty million dollars richer than a "$750 million" number I saw floated somewhere, you'd think theyd get around to a website that does more than say "get the app." Maybe that changes now that Facebook owns it. Maybe it gets worse. Hard to say which.
What I keep coming back to is how weird it is that this got bought by the company it was arguably supposed to be competing with. Facebook has photos. Facebook has always had photos, its basically the reason half of us signed up in the first place, to see pictures of people from high school we dont talk to anymore. And now instead of building a better version of what Instagram does, they just bought the version that already won. Thats not a criticism exactly, it's a legitimately smart move if you can afford it, and clearly they can. Im just saying it as someone who spent four years watching Facebook Photos stay basically the same ugly grid it was in 2008.
Anyway I put a filter called Earlybird on a photo of my coffee this morning and it looked like it was taken in 1974, which is the whole appeal I suppose, making an ordinary Tuesday look like it happened to somebody more interesting. Im not made fun of anymore for using it since apparently a billion dollars of Silicon Valley money agrees its a real thing and not just a toy. Feels like I got in a week before it stopped being cool and started being infrastructure, which tracks with basically every internet thing Ive ever liked.
Going to go see if my brother-in-laws dog has posted again. Betting yes.